North Carolina played a critical, often overlooked, role in our nation’s founding. We at the North Carolina History Project have put together this timeline of our state’s contributions to the American Revolution. The following timeline chronologically lays out some of the most important events in North Carolina’s revolutionary history and links out to our more...
To academic historians and amateur (or avocational) historians: We explored the North Carolina Historical Review to find articles about the American Revolution. I hope these summaries (written by a person, not AI) will whet your appetite for the longer versions. (A link to each article on JSTOR is provided for each.) Did North Carolina’s Revolution...
The North Carolina Historical Review includes a rich collection of articles about the American Revolution. This list was compiled by Kathryn McKee and Jane Shaw Stroup.
Pyle’s Defeat occurred in February 1781 near the end of the Revolution. It was a savage blow to British hopes, as Lt. Gen. Charles, Lord Cornwallis attempted to stop the Patriots’ momentum.
The subject of Scottish folklore and myth, Flora MacDonald assisted Prince Charles Stuart in his escape from King George II. In 1774, she moved to North Carolina, where her Loyalist husband and son fought in the Battle of Moores Creek.
The Edenton Tea Party was one of the earliest organized women’s political actions in United States history. On October 25, 1774, Mrs. Penelope Barker organized, at the home of Mrs. Elizabeth King, fifty-one women in Edenton, North Carolina. Together they formed an alliance wholeheartedly supporting the American cause against “taxation without representation.”
Furnifold McLendel Simmons (1854-1940)
A Democratic Congressman and U.S. Senator, Furnifold M. Simmons was born on January 20, 1854 to Furnifold Green, Jr., and Mary McLendel Jerman Simmons of Jones County, North Carolina. A leader in the "white supremacy" movement during the late 1890s, Simmons played an instrumental role in the disfranchisement of African Americans in North Carolina and served thirty years in the U.S. Senate, where his most notable achievements were obtaining funds for the Intercoastal Waterway and ensuring lower tariff rates and the passage of the Underwood-Simmons Tariff.
Edmund Fanning (1737 – 1808)
Friend of Royal Governor William Tryon and clerk of the Superior Court of Orange County, Edmund Fanning angered many North Carolina Regulators, who accused him of embezzlement and abuses of power. After helping put down the Regulator Rebellion, Fanning accompanied Lord Tryon to New York, where he worked in the royal colony's administration and remained a Loyaist during the American Revolution.
Charles Woodmason (1720?-1776?)
A planter and merchant from Charleston, South Carolina, who became an Anglican itinerant, Charles Woodmason, as one historian writes, spent his clerical career trying to stop the spread of evangelicalism in pre-Revolutionary Piedmont North Carolina.
Richard J. Salem (1947- )
A leading lawyer in the United States, Richard J. Salem employed character, intellect, and integrity in the service to community. Although blind, Salem quickly started practicing law, and in 1981 established the Salem Law Group concentrating on structuring business and financial transactions in North America and Europe.
Watauga Association
In the years before the American Revolution, settlers moved down the Valley of Virginia to arrive in the North Carolina backcountry, where neither Virginia nor North Carolina extended their authority. Undaunted, the settlements along the Watauga River negotiated a lease agreement with the Cherokee Nation, formed the first autonomous white government in the British colonies, and ultimately played a major role in the American Revolution.
State of Franklin
The State of Franklin existed from 1784 to 1789 in what is now upper East Tennessee. It was situated on lands that North Carolina ceded to the federal government, yet the State of Franklin was not recognized by North Carolina or by the federal government. This lack of recognition was due not only to factionalism among the Franklinites but also to factors surrounding North Carolina’s cession of its western lands.
Edward Vail (1717-1777)
Edward Vail, resident of Edenton, North Carolina, is most known for his support of American Independence. He served on North Carolina’s Committee of Correspondence prior to the American Revolution and was a colonel in the State Militia.
Francis Oliver (1740-1808)
Francis Oliver was a Baptist preacher from Duplin County, North Carolina and a delegate at the 1788 state convention to ratify the federal constitution. An Anti-Federalist, Oliver vigorously defended individual liberty and upheld republican values.
Averasboro (Town of)
On the Cape Fear River during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, only Fayetteville's and Wilmington’s populations outnumbered Averasboro’s. Yet population and commercial growth were not inevitable. Only a cemetery surrounded by a grove and a Civil War museum remind anyone that the port town once existed.
Naval Stores
From the 1730s to the 1860s, the naval stores industry was an increasingly profitable business. With its abundant Long Leaf Pines, North Carolina soon emerged as an invaluable producer of tar, pitch, and turpentine not only in the national economy but also in the international market.
Cross Creek
The second largest Cape Fear River town during the eighteenth century, Cross Creek was formed in 1756, was combined with Campbelltown in 1778, and was later named Fayetteville in 1783. During the Revolutionary War, the town was a hotbed of wartime activity and a home of divided loyalties.
James Iredell, Sr. (1751-1799)
James Iredell (1751-1799) was a leader of the North Carolina Federalists during the state ratification debates of the federal Constitution. Following ratification, President George Washington appointed the North Carolinian to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he served until his death in 1799. His best-known opinion is his dissent in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793) that provided the basis for the subsequent adoption of the Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.